Another friend, one who is smart and generally well informed, wrote to say, what’s the big deal with blackface? Suprisingly, he was not familiar with the history of minstrel shows, and seemingly unfamiliar with the controversy in general. And while yet another facebook friend’s reply was basically to say, “don’t do it, just don’t, because you shouldn’t,” that didn’t seem to completely satisfy him.

For a lot of people, the rule that white people shouldn’t wear blackface is self-evident, but actually, very little in life is self-evident. Self-evident is when an alien came from a distant galaxy and you told him something people do and he says, oh, that makes total sense. And I don’t think an alien would instantly grasp the blackface issue, because it’s contextual and historical.

So I wanted to try and answer the question. In fact, I’m going to give three answers: the answer that’s generally given, a consideration of what blackface implies, and finally a personal, why-I-wouldn’t-do-it-answer. I was originally just going to post an answer in the facebook thread, but then another friend posted his contention that it’s okay to use makeup to match skin tone for the sake of veracity, and since my middle answer is concerned with that, I figured I’d put this on my blog and tag them both.

My Three Answers to Why Shouldn't White People Wear Blackface

I

Most of the objection to blackface are contextual, of course. It started out in the minstrel shows, and in early Hollywood, blacks (and Asians, and Native Americans) were generally played (and defamed) by whites. Even some black stars were required to darken themselves, like Lena Horne, whose fair skin was considered too confusing for white audiences who wanted their blacks black and their whites white.

II

But I feel there’s a further issue with blackface. Consider, for a moment, the reverse; black people in whiteface. It’s not especially common, and I have a theory as to why. It’s because black people aren’t defining characters entirely according to their skin tone. If a black person dresses as Superman, are they going to put on white make-up, thus making an explicit statement that Superman is a white guy and black people can’t be Super Men? I doubt it. I think most black people think nothing of dressing as a leprechaun or a Viking or a Pilgrim without whitening their skin. Darkening your skin to reflect a character’s skin is, ultimately, a way of saying that race is a defining characteristic of who we are. Even that it's the defining characteristic.

So the question becomes, is it really necessary to have dark skin to make the costume right? If I want to be, say, Martin Luther King, should I wear blackface?

Well, no, both because that would be the ultimate slap in the face for African Americans and because even with blackface, no one would know who I was. White guy in a suit or black guy in a suit, I’m still going to have to explain my costume to everyone, which to my mind makes it a kind of crappy costume. On the other hand, if I go as Flava Flav, do I need dark skin? If I wear a giant freaking clock around my neck, is anyone not going to know who I am if I’ve got white skin?

Would I look more like Flava with darkened skin? First, no, because we look nothing alike, and second, who cares, because I’m not an actor playing him in a movie. It’s a freaking Halloween costume. It’s supposed to be fun and clever and entertain other people; it’s not supposed to allow me to walk into his house and have his wife say, “Honey, so glad you’re home.”

And yes, it does seem like a double standard that no one would make a big deal out of if someone wore whiteface. But the reason no one would make a big deal out of it is white people don’t care. There’s no history of us being denigrated by whiteface. We would all just go, hey, cool makeup.

III

I wrote a while back about the oddity of murder jokes being far more acceptable in modern society than rape jokes. I don’t make rape jokes, and I don’t wear blackface, because right now, these are both open wounds in our society, and why would I want to pick at an open wound? Blackface pisses off a lot of black people. I’m not black, so I’m not going to say, dude, get over it, grow a sense of humor.

I’m not saying you should never offend people. Lenny Bruce used offending people to great effect. I’m saying offending people shouldn’t be done cavalierly. If you’re a satirist who has a statement to make involving blackface, I could see that. If you’re a drunk guy at a costume party dressed like Little Black Sambo, you’re just an asshole.

Saturday, October 05, 2013

In a press conference, Speaker John A. Boehner vowed to continue a series of vague, hallow sound bites until the budget crisis gripping the nation is resolved.

“The American people don’t want their government shut down, and neither do I. All we’re asking for is to sit down and have a discussion. We ought to do something about our spending problem and the lack of economic growth in our country. “Our goal here was to bring fairness to the American people under Obamacare.”

“I could do this all day,” Boehner added.

While the speaker is convinced that a steady stream of vague platitudes will lead to a budget settlement on Republican terms, a confident President Obama, noting that a majority of the American public blames Republicans for the shutdown, has doubled down on his rhetoric, saying yesterday that he would make the GOP “drop to its knees and squeal like a pig.”

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Miley Cyrus was on the 2013 VMAs, and stuck her tongue out, and wore very few clothes, and did something called "twerking" that is apparently a dance move that is so much a part of black culture that Miley's doing it, and having black background dancers, makes her a racist. And her desperate need for attention makes her a slut, and maybe crazy, and saying that is slut shaming, and part of the way society oppresses women's expression of their sexuality. And everyone - everyone - is horrified by Cyrus's performance, so horrified for so many different reasons that they have to watch it over and over again and write articles about it that link to the video of her dancing so other people can see it and be horrified and write their own articles about how terrible Cyrus is and how she made a horrible mistake by doing something that has upped her fame level by about 1000% (at last when I hear the names Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift I'll now be able to remember which one is which).

Is the Miley Cyrus performance the most egregious overuse of sex in a song in the history of mankind? Is it the most horrific example of naked racism? Is it something shocking that we will never forget?

I'm going to say no.

So why is this getting so much attention? Well, first off, it was on the VMAs, which apparently a lot of people watch (honestly, my only objection to the Cyrus performance is it made me pay attention to the VMAs). It was a little (purposefully) over the top, and people started talking about it.

And then bloggers and columnists all over the world said, oh my god if I wrote something about this that puts a spin on it then I'll get a billion blog hits. And when they got their billion hits, more people wrote about it.

And that's it. The truth is, the Miley Cyrus performance is not especially important, except for being a textbook example of how the blogosphere, and modern journalism, which now takes its cue from the blogosphere, operates. Writers are sharks, and when first blood is spilled, there is a feeding frenzy.

It is understandable. Even though I am not linking to the video, because if you haven't seen it already it's probably a conscious decision, just the fact that this article contains the phrases "miley cyrus" and "VMAs" means it will probably get more hits than anything I've written since I wrote an article about Kate Beckinsale's breasts. That still won't be a lot of hits - maybe a few hundred over the next year - but for serious bloggers, a popular article about the thing everyone is talking about can get them as much attention - almost - as Miley.

Miley Cyrus tried to get attention, and succeeded, and while her performance is being lambasted everywhere, a whole slew of singers are already trying to figure out how they can get this much attention. And when they figure it out, expect much joyous wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Monday, April 29, 2013

As the editor/guide for about.com's Wii Games channel, one of my duties is to check comments to my blog to see if they are spam. Spam comments are generally generic comments along the lines of, "This is a very interesting piece, I look forward to other things you will right." The English is generally at least as awkward as that. Comments are often quite similar, but rarely identical. The user's name will generally then be linked to some website selling something.

Today I found something interesting in the comments of a post. Instead of the usual little comment, there was this strange, long piece of text with brackets indicating sections that could be swapped in and out. There is paragraph after paragraph. So it is apparent that there is some sort of program that is supposed to grab a random paragraph from this text and then randomly choose a word or phrase from within each bracket in order to create a spam comment that cannot be kept out with a simple text filter because it will never be quite the same.

I don't know if anyone will find that interesting besides me, but here is the entire thing. I realize aspiring spammers might find this a useful tool, but I think they probably all already know how to do this, so us non-spammers might as well understand how it works.

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About Me

I have written about technology and video game reviews for The New York Times, About.com, and others. I have just finished a novel and am currently searching for an agent. I am a passable and passionate Lindy Hopper. I live on the edge of the known universe, a.k.a. Washington Heights.